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Your Vineyard (Take Time)

We may find often that our Sunday can go by so quickly, that we don’t give a thought to the scriptures that we hear at Mass, or at a service, beyond that specific time set aside in our celebration. Once we leave church our lives are upon us with all of the demands and routines.

We encourage you to settle down and stop right now. Take some time, if you haven’t already today, to let God speak. We used to find this so hard, but in preparing a reflection for each Sunday we are forced to really look and see how God is speaking to us in His Word and how we are going to live that out in the mission field of our lives.

Phillipians 4.6-9
Matthew 21.33-43

In reading from the Gospel of Matthew we are painted a picture of salvation; God’s saving power throughout history, which still carries on today. There are symbols, you could say, that Jesus uses to share this story of his own identity and mission. The vineyard is the world, given to mankind by God to ‘cultivate and care for.’ The tenants are God’s chosen people. The owner of the vineyard; God himself. The servants are the prophets and Christ himself. Sin is the wretchedness of the tenants and their selfishness and greed. Jesus gives the Pharisees a simple explanation of the reality of their desire to kill him.

But, even though this parable was directed at the Pharisees it applies just as easily to us; the vineyard brings a symbol of our lives; the watchtower, fence, and winepress are all the means necessary to live our lives for Him; We are given a chance to know the Lord and are given His son as a way to Him, to be able to relate to God in an even more personal and intimate way.

Saint Paul, in his letter to the Phillipians, offers practical tips and pointers. Firstly, to pray in everything; to nurture our relationship with God and if we do this we will have His peace. Secondly, to keep in our minds all that is honourable, just, true, and pure.

It can be easy to become hard-hearted, to ignore our relationship with God or get distracted by the world. We must look at our lives and keep in mind what fruits we are bearing and producing in our vineyard. We can ask ourselves, “How am I giving glory to God instead of stealing that glory for myself?”